Paul Nurse interviewed Nick Higham

Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Professor Sir Paul Nurse talks about his life and work and receives the festival’s science and innovation award in recognition of his contribution to our understanding of cell growth and division.

Nurse’s most recent book is What is Life?, in which he talks up the challenge of defining life in a way that ordinary readers can understand. He looks at five great ideas that underpin biology and looks back on the roots of his own curiosity and interest in science. He says it is vital we all understand what life is so we can meet the challenges facing humans, including from climate change, pandemics and loss of biodiversity.

Nurse was jointly awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on cell biology. His work has helped to explain how the cell controls its cycle of growth and division. It has wide implications because errors in cell growth can lead to cancer and other serious diseases.  Nurse is director and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute, a research institute that aims to understand how living things work and improve treatment, diagnosis and prevention of disease. He was president of the Royal Society for five years, chaired the microbiology department at the University of Oxford and is a former director general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and former chief executive of Cancer Research UK. He was president of Rockefeller University of New York between 2003 and 2011.Here he talks to journalist Nick Higham, who was the BBC’s first ever media correspondent and is a former presenter of Meet the Author on the BBC news channel.

Nurse is the third recipient of the science and innovation award. Last year’s award went to Astronomer Royal Professor Lord Martin Rees and the first recipient was the Oxford Vaccine Group for its work on the Covid-19 vaccine.

Owen Mumford Ltd are supporters of the festival’s science and medicine programme and the festival’s annual award for science and innovation.